The Nimh California Tour – Full Story

The Nimh Team just returned from their California tour. The tour consisted of Brian Shima, Montre Livingston, Jon Jon Bolino, Joey Chase, Casey McFarland, Adam Brierley, Keith Brierley, Chad Hornish, Jon Elliott & Jan Welch. Check out this article for entire coverage of the tour.

Day 01: SDSF Skateshop – Escondido, CA (Aug. 10, 2008)

For the first stop of the Nimh tour we went to SDSF skateshop in Escondido to session the skatepark and hang out with the locals. Local legend, Robert Lievanos showed up to the park and showed everyone how to

flawlessly flow the park. Everyone on tour showed off their skills, but the high light of the session was Joey Chase attempting a massive quarter to quarter pipe transfer to soul grind.

The Santee guys ended up showing up with a segway that was so thrashed it looked straight out of a Mad Max film. Jan Welch decided to mob it around the parking lot and ran into a curb at full speed and totally wrecked himself. After the session at the park ended everyone headed around the corner to skate the infamous handicap rail at LR Green Middle School. Lots of sick action went down on this rail from Montre and Joey.

After the LR Green was destroyed by hammers, we moved on and re-grouped at Poway High School to watch Joey Chase lace the illest 100 mph 360 soul followed by an equally fast 360 acid. Joey and Montre then proceeded to lace some sick airs over the big set at there.

After the session ended half the crew went back to San Diego and the rest up to San Clemente. The next morning we drove up to SC, to pick up everyone else before heading to Woodward West in Stallion Springs.

Day 02: Woodward West Camp – Stallion Springs, CA (Aug. 11, 2008)

We arrived to Woodward at about three in the afternoon. The skies were clear, the weather was beautiful and the temperature was just perfect. Upon arriving we ran into Ritchie Velasquez and Brad

Anthony who welcomed up to camp. Jon Elliott and myself went up to the lodge to secure our rooms and drop off everyones bags. We returned to the park we ran into Killer K from Taiwan. We walked around the camp and found the team was already sessioning the hanger. They were suppose to do a demo at 6, but everyone was already finding things to skate and getting lots of footage. There were as absurd amount of big 360s going on, and Joey laced a huge disaster wallride.

After Shima laced his stunt for the day, we went down to the cafetaria to get some dinner before heading back to the hanger at six for the demo. They brought all 350 kids from the camp to the hanger to watch the Nimh team shred the park with X-Games BMX champion Jamie Bestwick and other visiting skateboard and bmx pros.

Once demo was finished we all went back to the lodge to relax a bit in the pool and hot tub. Once everyone was refreshed and recovered we drove back to the park to session hanger without all the campers, while myself and Jon drove to Techachpi to get hemroid lotion for Jon and three pizzas. Lots of footage was acquired during the time we were away and we made it back to the park to see some hammers go down.

It was 11:30pm and time to heaad back to the lodge where everyone filled their faces with pizza. We hung out for a while out on the rocks behind the lodge and were able to witness an amazing meteor shower in the clear skys of mountains. We had two rooms at the lodge, myself and jon passed out first and when I woke up in the morning I realized no one else decided to sleep in our room even though we had an extra bed and all the sleeping bags! Instead eight of them cuddled in the same room with no blankets in the cold of the night.

The next morning we headed out to Techahpi to eat at the towns historic diner that has been there since 1933. After a phenomenal breakfast we headed to the towns three thrift stores. I found a great pair of 1940’s American Optical glasses and Jon Jon found himself a wig and a Rod Stewart hat. That kids has been spending way to much time in Philly.

Day 03: Intuition Skateshop – Bakersfield, CA (Aug. 12, 2008)

Leaving Woodward around noon, we drove an hour west to Bakersfield to stop at Intuition Skateshop. About seventy-five skaters greeted us upon our arrival to the shop. Matt Mickey managed to convince the local paper to story on Shima to promote the event which turned out amazing.

The heat in Bakersfield was almost unbearable at 106 degrees. The inside of the shop was even hotter and humid from all the sweat coming off everyone. Matt placed three slider bars in a row in front of his shop and skaters took over the entire block. It was really cool to see how many kids came out from the area to hang out and skate with us.

Matt did an amazing job putting this stop together. He fed all the kids pizza and hooked us up with amazing tri-tip bbq. His mom baked dozens of cookies for her legendary cookies for everyone. Matt’s cat named Mickey attacked everyone it saw and Matt’s dad was one of the funniest people I have met in my entire life. Now I know why Matt is such an outstanding guy.

Around 6:00pm we headed out to San Luis Obispo to meet up with our friend Juan Mosqueda. Matt gave us directions and they were totally wrong and put us about an hour out of the way! Thanks Matt! Haha. The drive there was pretty cool though and we drove through the oil fields from “There will be blood.” We stopped at them to shoot some photos and were busted by security within a minute.

Juan had us meet him at the Motel 6 by his house to drop off the team rookies, however the hotel was full. We drove down to Quality Inn and booked a room for the Brierley twins, Jon Jon, Chad and Casey. Since Casey is the oldest of the under 21 crew we made him the den mother, which he did not think was entertaining. Once they were settled in, us older boys headed over to Juan’s house to drink some beer and hangout.

Day 04: Inline Warehouse – San Luis Obispo, CA (Aug. 13, 2008)

The next morning we left the house and picked up the boys at the hotel. The first was an amazing Mexican restaurant Juan took us to. I had a tongue taco which was off the hook. Jon Jon didn’t even eat and proceeded to start throwing up because he had taken calcium pills on an empty stomach.

We headed to Oceania to skate a school with an amazing fat downstair rail. The spot kind of had a funky run up, but after a while everyone started shredding it. Lots of footage went down on this rail and we were there for probably an hour or so. We met up with some locals here and went to one of their houses for a pit stop. Once everyone was refreshed we made our way to the women’s center in Arroyo Grande which had several spots to skate. Joey killed the huge rail with a disaster topsoul and cross grab back torque. There was also a crazy disaster ledge that Montre 450 back royaled.

Unfortunately we were running out of time to skate more street because we needed to head out to Sacramento. We ended up going to Inline Warehouse after the session and doing some really cool interviews with the team and Juan with his HD camera. He had already filmed todays session with some amazing slow motion HD shots that made our mouths water. Once we were done, we packed up the car for the six hour back road journey to Dustin Dixon’s house in Folsom.

Day 05: Roller Warehouse – Sacramento, CA (Aug. 14, 2008)

We arrived to Dustin’s house around 11:00pm Wednesday night to empty house. Dustin showed up a few minutes later with his girlfriend and they began feeding us whiskey and other treats. Within an hour another 15-20 locals, including some Florida transplants that are friends of Joey showed up to Dustins. It started getting pretty hectic with the whiskey flowing trough peoples veins. Around 3:30 in the morning everyone finally fell asleep, but was very hot and I managed to find couch with a fan blowing directly on it, which was heaven.

The next morning we rolled out to get some grub and then proceeded to go session around Folsom. We hit up several schools which we were kicked out of almost immediately. At one of them, we were kicked out and Joey still managed to lace a sick front torque to torque transfer. The next spot we hit was a kinked rail at a Mormon Church that Joey topacided in his short shorts. He looked pretty hot. After that we hit up sick transitioned bank that Shima just destroyed.

Once it got to hot to skate the banks we drove super far to Sacramento to hit the infamous 16 stair rails. Lot of hot action went down on that rail from the likes of Montre, Joey, Sean Keane and Casey Bagozzi, among others. It was a huge session and lots of fun. The last spot we hit was the Zinfendal ledges, which we were kicked out almost immedietely from. We cut out to get some dinner and regrouped at Dustin house for another fun night.

Dustin took us out to downtown Folsom, which looked like a city from the old wild west. We went to the Folsom Hotel bar which looked pretty sweet, but was full of lots of jocks who stared us all down top to bottom. We only lasted there a few drinks before heading to another bar near Dustin’s. We closed the place out and went back to the pad and hung out for another hour before everyone was done for the night.

Day 06: Aggressivemall – Sunnyvalle, CA (Aug. 15, 2008)

Rolling out of bed around noon, we left the comfort of Dustin’s house and headed west towards Sunnyvale in the south bay of San Francisco. Sticking my hand out the window on the drive I noticed the temperature started to decrease substantially, which brought a smile to my face. A large group of skaters was awaiting us upon arrival to Aggressivemall.

We walked into the shop and I was very excited to see how much they have grown. Walking through the warehouse we exited out back where a skate session was already going down. The boys threw on their blades and started shredding with all the locals who kept showing up. One of the employees started grilling up some hot dogs to feed all the hungry mouths that showed up. As I was eating my buddy Neil from Hong Kong showed up, which was pretty sweet.

After a couple hours at Aggressivemall we rolled down the street to the Cisco Ledge with a bunch of other skaters. It was only a matter of minutes before some lame security guard came to try and get us out. He told us he called the cops, but this didn’t stop Chad from ripping up the spot for another 10 minutes. The next spot we wanted to go was Greer park in Palo Alto. Shima has been talking about going here for ever, since the last time he went he was still a kid. Some locals thought they knew where it was but took us to the Sunnyvale park instead. I typed Greer into the GPS and we cut out straight to Palo Alto so we could still skate it before the sun went down.

We arrived to Greer Park, which is a 70s concrete skateboard park. We sessioned it for about 20 minutes before about a dozen other bladers showed up. Lots of cool tricks went down here and it was really a specticle to watch. Some older bmxer who was there, freaked out after he recognized Brian Shima and kept yelling his name and asking him if he needed to getting pulled by his bike.

When the sun went down we headed to downtown Palo Alto to eat some pizza. I love this place because there are endless amounts of amazing women that live here. The boys felt the same way and Montre and Jon Jon were trying to holler East Coast style which was hilarious. After grubbing down we headed up to San Francisco to Pat Lennen’s house. Pat took us out to a super cool bar called the Knock Out, where we chilled out for a while before heading to the 3300 Club near his house. The most random part of the night was running into V3000 and Bryant Rutledge randomly at the Knock Out bar!

Day 07: Street Skating – San Francisco, CA (Aug. 16, 2008)

I woke up around noon and went to coffee shop across the street from Pat’s house to update the site for day and to wake myself up with a double vanilla latte. Jon and Brian showed up to the coffee shop about 20 minutes later and we planned out day. We needed head back to San Diego so we decided we would skate a couple of hours in the city.

Pat took us to an amazing transfer rail to stair gap line for the first spot. He has taken people here for years waiting for someone to lace it. Today was his day. Joey Chase laced topsoul to fs nugen transfer and then 180′ed the massive stair gap. Pretty good for the first spot Joey. We left spot and headed to one of Pat’s favorite sandwich spots. This place damn good. I wish I could remember the name.

Now came the fun part, we sat in traffic for an hour to get to Treasure Island. In case you are wondering, Treasure Island is an old US Marine Corps base that is shut down and abandoned. There is bowl, where people have brought different obstacles to skate. Everyone had a blast here. Unfortunetely we ran out of time and head to make the eight hour mission back to San Diego.

This was a great trip and everyone totally ripped everywhere we went. We will be back in SF soon to film more. Until them enjoy more fresh and new content on rat-tail.com.

Nimh Skate Company – 7 days in California Tour 2008 from Rat Tail Vimeo Page on Vimeo.

UPDATE 09/05/2008: NEW Nimh edit by Juan Mosqueda for Inline Warehouse!
Juan filmed and put together a sweet HD edit of interviews and some skating when we were at Pismo Beach. See what Brian Shima and the Nimh Team have to say. Check out the video at inlinewarehouse.com